Opinion

Colorado author Sandra Dallas coming to Brush January 11

By Lisa Jager Brush News-Tribune Staff Writer

Posted:
01/07/2014 07:57:36 AM MST

Updated:
01/07/2014 07:59:07 AM MST

Best selling Colorado author Sandra Dallas will speak and answer questions at the East Morgan County Library on Saturday, January 11, at 1:30 pm. Dallas will also sign copies of her books. (Courtesy photo)

A long standing interest in women’s issues and learning a neighbor formerly worked in a brothel were part of the inspiration for Colorado author Sandra Dallas to write her most recent novel “Fallen Women.” Dallas will speak at the East Morgan County Library (EMCL) on Saturday, January 11, at 1:30 p.m.“Fallen Women” is set in 1885 in Denver where wealthy New York socialite Beret Osmundsen learns of the death of her estranged younger sister Lillie. At the same time, Osmundsen discovers that a prostitute named “Lillie Brown” has been brutally murdered and becomes convinced that Brown was her sister. She learns the murderer has not been caught and begins to investigate, exploring all facets of Denver society and her sister’s life as a prostitute and tries to reconcile this reality with the memories of her sister as a young girl.Dallas said women’s issues, including prostitution and the plight of some women in those years have always interested her.When Dallas was first married she and her husband, Robert Atchison, lived in Breckenridge, Colorado, in the early 1960s where he served as the public relations director for the town. Dallas said, “Back then there were still a lot of older people in town, it was still an old mining town.” They lived next door to an older woman, who Dallas said “was kind of like a Grandma, a wiry woman with white hair.

Advertisement

”The woman lived with her sister and would go fishing each morning and leave fresh fish on the young married couple’s doorstep to make for breakfast. It would be some time before Dallas learned that her neighbor had once worked as a prostitute. “They were nice neighbors, nice ladies,” Dallas said. “For a long time I had no idea of her backdrop and gradually learned who she was.”However, Dallas said she was “really just a nice old lady. Everybody in town knew her. She was part of the fabric of the town.”Later when Dallas was doing research for a book on Gothic architecture in Colorado she came across an article that described some of the conditions for women back in those times and how a prostitute had committed suicide. She described the plight of these women as “a hideous thing.”“There were a lack of options women for women back then, and I’ve written about that in other books,” Dallas said. “You could get married and that was it. If your marriage fell apart, you didn’t have a lot of options. And if you slipped as a girl before you got married, your family could throw you out.”Some women became “domestics,” cleaning and cooking for families. Dallas referenced a book called “Emily: The Diary of a Hard-Worked Woman” about a woman who worked as domestic in Colorado after her divorce in the 1890s. Dallas said Emily would work all day scrubbing floors, sometimes getting an old torn blouse for payment.“Life was hard for women and prostitution was one option,” Dallas said. “If they were pretty, it was a lot easier work than scrubbing floors.”Early life and careerDallas was born in Washington, D.C. in 1939, where her father worked for the government. She said when her mother’ health became poor their doctor recommended a drier climate. They moved to Colorado in 1945 and the family also spent several years living in Utah during Dallas’ high school years before returning to Denver.Dallas said she was always interested in writing when she growing up although, at times, she considered other career options. “I went through stages of wanting to be a stewardess or a teacher, but writing was the only thing I was really serious about,” she said. Following high school, she obtained a journalism degree from the University of Denver. Her first job out of college was a public relations position with Neusteters, a women’s clothing store chain, one of which was at one time housed in the former Tattered Cover book store location in Cherry Creek. The pay was low with Dallas saying “I made $50 a week and I couldn’t afford to take the bus to work.”Dallas then took a job at an advertising agency, where she met her husband.Of the job she said, “I liked to say I was a copy writer, but really I was the receptionist.” She then got a job in 1961 as an assistant at the Business Week bureau, when the bureau chief called the University of Denver looking for female journalists. At the time Dallas said women were not considered for the bureau chief position, only for the assistant. However, Dallas eventually became the first female Business Week bureau chief and would go on to work for Business Week for 25 years.Dallas first began writing non-fiction about old houses in Colorado and guidebooks when she was living in Breckenridge. At the time writing fiction didn’t interest her and that she didn’t read it herself. She and her husband returned to Denver when her former position as an assistant became open at Business Week. Her career in fiction writing was launched when she and a couple of fellow journalist friends were having lunch and began discussing the lucrative world of fiction writing. Dallas said, “We came up with a plot and did a little writing but it never really went anywhere.”However, it was this experience that made her aware of how much she enjoyed this style of writing. “I realized that I really liked writing fiction. It was appealing. It really surprised me,” she said.” When I had tried to write fiction earlier, I would stare at stare at blank page in a typewriter and find it daunting.”Dallas said her first novel “Buster’s Midnight Cafe” published in 1990 “was really crude. I was lucky to get a very good editor who spent months working with me, saying things like the baby died too fast, let us grieve, tell us how know how characters feel.”Dallas has since written 13 works of fiction and also has written seven non-fiction books and one children’s book. Her books have won multiple awards.Quilting as a theme in booksQuilting has been a theme or backdrop for some of Dallas’ books, including a book called “The Quilt That Walked to Golden” about the history of quilting in Colorado. Although Dallas said she used to quilt when her children were young she refers to herself “as a lousy quilter.” “I hit on the subject (quilting) in ‘The Persian Pickle Club,’ my first big book,” she said. “It was based on an incident in my parent’s lives in 1933 in Kansas. I needed some kind of women’s group for the book, so I chose a quilter’s group. I knew there were quilters out there, but I didn’t know there were 25 million of them.”Dallas expressed strong appreciation for the art of quilting and attends a large quilt show in Houston each year, which attracts more than 50,000 people, nearly all of them women along with a handful of men, where she said “the work just blows your mind.” She said years ago women were not encouraged in the fine arts “so they put their artistry into what they did well” including arranging houses and quilting.“Women loved their quilts. It gave them a real sense of accomplishments,” she said. She said now quilts are “art using fabric. They really are works of art.” Quilting will be a focal point in Dallas’ next book “A Quilt for Christmas” which will come out next November. The book is set during the Civil War and is about a woman who makes a quilt for husband who is a soldier and addresses the difficulties woman faced being alone during that time period and how they coped.In spite of the quilting theme in some of her books, Dallas said she doesn’t consider herself a quilt novelist, although she admires people who write them. Instead, she said she is “a novelist who loves quilts.”Although many of her books are set in the mountains of Colorado, two have been set in eastern Colorado. “Tallgrass” is a fictional account of a Japanese internment camp during World War II, and “The Diary of Mattie Spencer” is about a pioneer woman who moves with her new husband from Iowa to the fictional town of Mingo, Colorado. Dallas said this is one of her favorite books and visited northeast Colorado for inspiration when she was writing it. “I used to go out there and try to see what would be like to not see a single tree and be alone on the prairie back in that time. There is a real beauty to the open land,” she said.During her January 11 appearance at EMCL, Dallas will speak about her books and also looks forward to answering questions, including those about writing and getting published.A note from EMCLAssistant Library Director Elizabeth Jarrell said Dallas has long been a popular author with many library patrons, which made her a logical choice for an author to invite to speak at EMCL. Jarrell said Dallas, who is a New York Times best selling author, is the “first big author we’ve had in at least five years” and that the library staff “is excited about it” as well as patrons. “We’ve had some very positive feedback,” Jarrell said.Copies of Dallas’ books will be available for purchase during her appearance and for signing by the author.

Article Comments

We reserve the right to remove any comment that violates our ground rules, is spammy, NSFW, defamatory, rude, reckless to the community, etc.

We expect everyone to be respectful of other commenters. It's fine to have differences of opinion, but there's no need to act like a jerk.

Use your own words (don't copy and paste from elsewhere), be honest and don't pretend to be someone (or something) you're not.

Our commenting section is self-policing, so if you see a comment that violates our ground rules, flag it (mouse over to the far right of the commenter's name until you see the flag symbol and click that), then we'll review it.